Stephen Cushing Email & Phone Number

Bendigo, Vic, Au

Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

The role of delivery manager is a combination of product owner, scrum master and project manager, involving engaging with stakeholders to establish roadmaps and define requirements, and leading and supporting a team of consultants to deliver, whilst tracking and reporting progress, managing risks and removing blockers. Key Achievements✓ March 2022 – August 2024: Product Owner at the Clean Energy Regulator Delivered the BETA release of the Energy and Emissions Reporting System (EERS).The Clean Energy Regulator was running a material program using SAFE (Scaled Agile Framework), and Azure DevOps for delivery management. As Product Owner for the EERS team, I worked with senior stakeholders and the broader program to establish and execute on a product roadmap. This involved working with architecture, the (UI) design authority, business subject matter experts and other key stakeholders to define an architecture and service blueprints, and from there define and prioritise detailed requirements for the team to deliver. There was also a substantial data migration aspect to the project, involving migration of legacy data to the Enterprise CRM (Dynamics 365), and from there synchronising and transforming data in the Enterprise (Azure) Data Lake.✓ September 2024 – Current: Delivery Manager at the Department of Home AffairsProvided service management of the AWS infrastructure for the National Joint Common Operating Picture. The NJCOP provides a critical system that underpins operations of the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). The AWS infrastructure on which the system resides is managed using IaC (Infrastructure as Code) pipelines, and requires 24x7 support. In this role, I have established an initial roadmap (to feature level), with all work structured and prioritised in Azure DevOps. As Home Affairs are transitioning to DevOps, I have been heavily involved in establishing their boards and work structure.

Kyabram

Provide leadership and drive practice development, delivery management, and continuous improvement for the software development team. Establish and maintain client relationships, including ongoing connection on delivery plans and resolution of client concerns.Key Achievements✓ Established the "Get Work" process, estimation methodology, and capacity planning.Created leadership connection with the need for increased capacity, required to meet client needs✓ Established Client Reporting, creating consistent connection with the change agenda and timeframes.✓ Established a cross-skill and knowledge sharing agenda to support capacity planning outcomes and mitigate key person risk✓ Instituted Project Management practices including key delivery measures such as earned value and cost performance indicator. Increased cost performance indicator from 30% to 90% within the first 3 months.✓ Created KPI views including queue size and SLA compliance. Reduced queue sizes by 90%+.

Bendigo, Australia

Lead the establishment of Technology Services Strategy as part of the Senior Technology Services team. Influence sub-domain and squad strategies and roadmaps in alignment with the overarching strategy. Key Achievements✓ Completed the Technology Solutions and Services Strategy, aligning our leadership thinking around the increasing need for investment in automation, self-service, and cloud capabilities, preparing us well for the bank’s broader strategic agenda which is now in motion.✓ Worked with Deloitte to review strategic options for end-end delivery of Technology Services for the organisation, including cost/benefit comparison, risk review and overall recommendation. This resulted in a material change in direction, landing on a far better approach to achieving the bank’s strategic goals.✓ Led the rollout of Agile Methodology for Technology Solutions and Services (approx. 150 staff), through which we grew our servant leader mindset and increased team empowerment and responsiveness. • Included agreeing the domain structure, squad formation, oversight of the agile coaches, training rollout (including hands-on involvement as one of the trainers), and guiding and tracking squad maturity.• Stepped in as Iteration Manager for a struggling squad, shifting them from being quite fractured into a positive collaborative team highly engaged in agile practices. ✓ Stepped in as Environments Manager across a strategic program in trouble, with an initial delivery of Open Banking in AWS cloud, establishing the foundations of the bank’s new digital platform. Worked with stakeholders to establish a series of interim mitigations for several technical product gaps, in parallel with upwards engagement to establish a program replan.✓ Ongoing involvement in Business Systems and Technology Health oversight and recommendations, with the strategic intent to simplify the business systems landscape.

Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

Perform strategic reviews as required, involving current and target state “ABCD” analysis, industry research, and providing options and recommendations. This has involved influencing leadership at various levels to establish alignment of purpose and taking a cultural approach to achieve strategic goals.Key Achievements✓ Completed the Technology Services Strategy✓ Tracked and influenced delivery of the Technology Services Strategy, including a range of initiatives with some key items being:• Technology Health review and treatment recommendations• Implementation of new Service Desk Tool, and associated Service Catalogue and Service Automation• Reduction in network costs (moving from fixed lines to network over the internet)✓ Drove the bank’s early cloud strategy, engaging with stakeholders to establish a positive mindset across the division, and supporting cloud pilot business cases and projects - some of which went on to become key components of the bank’s architecture.✓ Established the bank’s DevOps strategy, and from there the bank’s DevOps Team, which I ran as Scrum Master. We had some amazing outcomes during the pilot phase, with benefits of the order of $1M+ pa – reducing ongoing deployment effort by approximately 3-4 FTE, increasing deployment speed and frequency, increasing environment sharing, and addressing customer-facing outages.✓ Drove remediation activities across the bank’s customer-facing digital platforms (online banking and online account opening) that were experiencing material production outages. Required a high degree of collaboration with internal and vendor stakeholders to identify and incrementally address root-cause technology and process issues.

Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

This role was to implement Operations Management for the Change Resources team (100+ staff), with initial focus areas being to uplift operational risk management and driving capability development / continuous improvement - including the definition and oversight of the Change Resources Transformation Program.As the Transformation Program ended, the role evolved to include and focus on a key area of challenge, that being the state of our Environments Management / DevOps capabilities. This involved leadership of the Environments Management team, and development and delivery of a focused Transformation Roadmap.Key Achievements✓ Implemented Operational Risk Management practices within the Change Resources team, in collaboration with the bank’s Risk Management team✓ Coordinated delivery of the Change Resources Transformation Program, including a range of initiatives with some key items being:• Establishment of an Environments Automation team• Establishment of a Rapid Delivery team• Establishment of an Organisational Change Management capability✓ Uplifted the Environments Management / DevOps team, driving delivery of ongoing improvements to the bank’s Environment Management services, with some key items being:• Migrated the bank to a new Mainframe Software Configuration Management solution (ISPW) – reducing costs by $1M+ pa and resolving key technical issues in the Mainframe DevOps toolchain.• Established service definitions with well-defined process flows and measurement – driving service consistency and continuous improvement. • Established an environment booking solution to manage test environment commitments• Delivered an Integrated Test Data Provisioning solution – addressing customer data privacy risk and improving operational efficiency.

Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

Supporting a significant enterprise program in trouble, I took on management of the Siebel CRM team, which had been struggling to engage and deliver. The role involved working as part of a large program in a high stakes environment to integrate complex systems resulting from the merger of Bendigo Bank and Adelaide Bank.Key Achievements✓ Uplifted the team cross-stream engagement, development process and quality management.✓ Established an effective delivery capability, and the team went on to deliver the organisation’s CRM solution.

Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

Having merged with Adelaide Bank, I was accountable for portfolio delivery across the merged Applications Delivery Program of Work, with line management for the Applications Delivery Project Managers. Accountabilities were- Work packaging and charter creation for standard software delivery projects- Delivery oversight for projects within the program- Priority calls, escalation point for significant issuesKey Achievements✓ Ongoing delivery of change to the bank’s IT applications✓ Produced an effective Portfolio Planning solution across the merged organization, requiring significant engagement with a variety of business and technical stakeholders

Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

In this role, I led a team of up to 40+ practitioners to deliver the IT Applications Development Program of Work - including all standard software delivery projects for the bank, including mainframe CRM and TPS, branch teller systems, and customer-facing digital platform.- Work packaging and charter creation for standard software delivery projects- Delivery oversight for projects within the program- Priority calls, escalation point for significant issues- Line management for project managers, development teams, and the test team.- Resource planning and managementKey Achievements✓ Ongoing delivery of change to the bank’s business systems✓ Ongoing improvement to underlying technical systems✓ Standardised resource management (booking and release) practices - structured to effectively balance the needs of line managers and project managers✓ Recovery and successful delivery of the Phone Banking project - a material investment for the bank at that time.

Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

As Project Manager I led a team of 20+ practitioners to deliver packaged business changes to the bank’s teller systems and customer-facing digital platform. This was run using a formal release-based software development lifecycle within a PMI-based project management framework.Key Achievements✓ Ongoing delivery of the bank’s business systems✓ Ongoing improvement to the underlying technical systems✓ Successful implementation of the Agents Delivery System The Agents Delivery System was a teller front-end for bank agencies Australia-wide. It was delivered using the bank’s enterprise architecture, with the web (J2EE) front-end communicating with the bank’s mainframe via an ESB (Enterprise Service Bus), and secured via IBM’s Tivoli Access Manager. The project was delivered on time and on budget, delivering a secure, highly available web application, significantly reducing agent provisioning costs and opening new opportunities for the bank. ✓ Recovery and successful implementation of Enterprise Document Management – Data ServicesThis project was to deliver the data services required to meet the needs of the bank’s Enterprise Document Management solution. Coming into this project, it had been running for over a year, and with only 3 months remaining it was still gathering requirements, and was well away from completion. I implemented an accelerated approach to requirements definition, and established test automation to optimise testing speed and quality, and delivered the project to it’s original due date, providing the foundations for the Document Management project to meet it’s goals.

Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

Technical Lead for the Branch Systems team, accountable for client/server front-end systems used by branches, including teller transactional systems, customer and account maintenance systems, and loan application processing systems. This involved driving design and estimation and providing mentoring and support to technical staff. A key achievement was the end-end delivery of the “Trade Finance System”, used to maintain foreign currency contracts. This included delivery of a C++ DLL converting fixed width messages (required for mainframe communications) to/from XML.

Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

Design and coding across the teller front-end systems using a variety of languages including C++, Visual Basic, VBScript, SQL, and Perl. This included development of the teller transactions system, including establishing a self-healing automated deployment solution for branch deployments. A key achievement was the end-end delivery of the bank’s Customer and Account Maintenance solution, including delivery of a C++ DLL for SNA communications, resolving a material performance issue with the previous vendor-supplied solution for mainframe communications.

Bendigo, Victoria, Australia

This was 6 Months out of hours contract work (with approval from Bendigo Bank), providing coding and DevOps services to a project scoped to implement a proprietary banking application framework into Suncorp. A technical highlight was the delivery of a C++ DLL providing the interface to the Electronic Cash Draw.

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

Sole programmer using C++, developing the “Function Point Workbench” (a project size/cost estimation tool). A technical highlight was the remediation of material performance issues, including reducing large database load performance from 2 hours+ down to seconds.

Operational Risk Master Class

Siebel Business Analysts Training

Mt Eliza Leadership Program

Concepts around leadership and change management.

Management Development Course

- Communication and Learning - Interviewing Skills - Managing on-the-job Training - Improving Workplace Performance

Project Management

Four separate courses as follows: - Principles of Project Management - Project Leadership and Team Building - Financial Management.

Bachelor Of Applied Science With Distinction, Major - Computing, Minor - Mathematics

Received the following awards: - The Science Staff Award (1990) - National Australia Bank Award (1991) - Mathematics Prize (1992)